Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The day the world ended is a film I saw late at night and found it one
of the most frightening I had ever seen, to the extent that I had
nightmares about it and remembered scenes from it for the 45 years since
I first saw it. The plot: a survivalist with experience - observations
of horrible mutations after the H-Bomb explosion in the Pacific - has
built a house protected by lead deposits and natural ridges. But there
is a kink in his plan: a group of uninvited guests show up. With only
enough food for himself, his daughter, and her missing fiancee, the
danger of hunger increases tension between the group that includes a
scientist and a crook with his stripper babe. But the scariest part is a
man who survived in mutated form, with silvery atomic skin, who can
walk through the radioactive mist to the outside world in search of the
raw meat he craves, where, he assures the scientist, "wonderful things
are happening, but you will all die." The mutated man returns at night
because he has enemies on the outside. All the residents are unsure
whether or not they will become like that man with the radiation that is
sure to come with the next rains.

This kind of thing - of a
infection from radioactive contamination that causes irreversible
mutation - absolutely terrified me. There is one scene where a man
emerges from the mist with clawed hands and three-toed feet, weeping
from hunger because "the stronger ones" won't share their hunts with
him. He became an image of feverish nightmare for me. Meanwhile, the
daughter keeps hearing someone call to her, perhaps her missing fiancee,
a presence who comes ever closer to the house. Though she has fallen
for the scientist, she feels somehow beholden to the mysterious
creature, who when revealed is (admittedly rather campily) monstrous and
invulnerable until the scientist realizes that it fears the
uncontaminated.

This is really great fun and brought me back to
my childhood terror of nuclear holocaust. Radiation was such a
mysterious thing then. The acting is also unusually good for low budget
scifi of the 50s, with Connors (or Minnix) as the thuggish tough, but
also Denning, who was in many 60s TV shows. Just this film is well worth
the price of the dvd. It is by far my favorite of the Corman legacy.